The closing of Kalamazoo Advantage Academy

Kalamazoo Public Schools is holding an open house Monday night at Lincoln International Studies School and Wednesday at Milwood Elementary School for students who attended Kalamazoo Advantage Academy.

It will be interesting to see how many Advantage students end up at KPS and how this works out.

The good news for KPS is that they're likely to see enrollment rise by another 200 or so students because of Advantage's closing. That could translate into $2 million or so extra from the state.

One the other hand, KPS also was worried about space issues in its elementaries, and this will put some additional pressure on them.

Moreover, the students coming out of Advantage are likely to be at-risk children with high needs and many of whom have already struggled in KPS or a regular public school like it. So there's a considerable challenge here of meeting the needs of children whose needs have not been met very well so far in a traditional setting.